By Dan Ambrose: WBC featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez (56-8, 47 KOs) will be defending his title on September 20th in what shapes up to be a title milking fight against 35-year-old former four division world champion Jorge Arce (64-7-2, 49 KOs) in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico.
Arce isn’t ranked in the top 15 at featherweight, and he’s clearly way too small to be fighting in this division. Arce want’s to try and win a 5th division world title, but he’s picking the wrong guy to be trying to accomplish that goal against.
There’s actually no weak champions for Arce to go after, so he’s kind of in a no win situation in fighting Gonzalez in hopes of getting lucky.
Arce has won his last three fights since getting stopped in the 3rd round by Nonito Donaire in 2012 in super bantamweight action. Arce retired from boxing after the Donaire fight, but then he came back a year later. Arce has since beaten Jose Carmona, Aldimar Silva Santos and Jorge Lacierva. None of them you can call high caliber opposition, which is pretty much why Arce beat them.
Arce looks slow at featherweight and top heavy due to the muscle he’s put on in his upper body. His skinny legs that he started his career in the light flyweight with remain under developed. Arce really belongs at super flyweight or bantamweight at best. Arce is a knockout waiting to happen in the featherweight division, as he’s way out of his weight class and his punching power hasn’t carried up with him.
Gonzalez stopped Abner Mares in the 1st round last year in August. Since then, Gonzalez stopped little known fringe contender Clive Atwell in the 10th round after sitting idle for 9 months.
It would be nice if Arce had to take on a good featherweight to actually earn the shot at Gonzalez because then fans could be spared seeing a likely quick knockout loss for Arce.
If Arce had to take on the likes of Simpiwe Vetyeka, Celestino Caballero, Gary Russell Jr., Lee Selby, Rocky Juarez or Jayson Velez to prove himself worthy of getting a shot at Gonzalez, then boxing fans would be getting a better deal, because Arce would have proven that he rates a title shot. But with the way it is now, Arce seems to be getting the title shot just based on his popularity rather than what he’s accomplished recently.
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